Chapter 18 Sloane
Sloane
The fluorescent lights above my desk buzz with their usual aggressive hum, casting everything in harsh, unforgiving angles.
I've been staring at the same spreadsheet for twenty minutes, but the numbers blur together like watercolors in rain.
My coffee has gone cold, and the quarterly projections that were due an hour ago sit untouched in my inbox.
I can't concentrate. Haven't been able to since Tuesday's "meeting", where Garrett and I spent forty-five minutes pretending to discuss player interview schedules while I fought the urge to reach across the table and touch his hand.
My phone buzzes against the desk. The sound makes me jump like I've been caught stealing.
Garrett
Need to review the playoff media rollout plan. My place? 7 p.m.?
His name on my screen is a spark hitting dry tinder.
I stare at the message, reading it three times before the words register.
The "playoff media rollout plan" is our code now—plausible professional cover for meetings that have nothing to do with work and everything to do with the fact that I haven't been able to think about anything but him for days.
This is dangerous. Reckless. His apartment means privacy, yes, but it also contains risk. We could be seen.
But God, I want to see him. Really see him. Not the careful, professional version he wears like armor at work, but the man who reads Dostoevsky and listens to jazz when he thinks no one is watching.
My fingers hover over the keyboard for thirty seconds before I type back.
See you at 7.
The elevator in Garrett's building climbs with a mechanical precision that feels at odds with the chaos in my chest. Each soft ding of a passing floor is a countdown, and my heart answers with a frantic, corresponding beat. The last time I was here, I was running from a blizzard, the danger a physical thing—wind and ice and biting cold. Tonight, the danger is all internal, a quiet, humming wire of heat in my veins. This isn't a storm to be survived. It’s the unsettling quiet that comes after, the moment you have to step outside and see what’s left standing.
The hallway outside his door smells like cedar and expensive cologne from one of his neighbors. I smooth my sweater—cashmere, navy blue, chosen with more care than I want to admit—and knock softly.
The door opens, and Garrett stands there in jeans and a gray Henley that clings to his shoulders. His hair is slightly damp, like he just showered, and the scent of his soap wraps around me like an invitation. But it's his expression that stops my breath—soft, unguarded, genuinely happy to see me.
"Hi," he says, and the simple word carries enough warmth to melt steel.
"Hi yourself."
He steps aside to let me in, and I cross the threshold into his world.
The loft feels different without the chaos of a blizzard to distract me.
Warmer. More intimate. The exposed brick walls glow amber in the soft lighting, and the Mississippi stretches beyond his floor-to-ceiling windows like a dark ribbon threaded with city lights.
Jazz drifts from hidden speakers—something complex and melancholy that I don't recognize but somehow fits him perfectly.
Something tender unfolds in my chest. This is him. Not Tank Sullivan, the stone-faced defenseman who treats reporters like hostile interrogators. This is Garrett.
And the terrifying, wonderful truth crashes over me like a wave: I'm not just attracted to him. I'm falling for him. All of him.
"So," Garrett says, opening the refrigerator with a grin that makes my pulse skip, "for our very important 'playoff media rollout' meeting... did you bring the spreadsheets?"
I lean against the counter, watching him move through his space with quiet efficiency. "They're in the car. I figured we could get to them right after you tell me about the emotional state of your sourdough starter."
He laughs—that low, genuine sound that never fails to undo me. "She's thriving, thanks for asking. Bubbling with personality."
"Good to hear. I was worried our last meeting might have stressed her out."
"Nah, she's tougher than she looks." He pulls out a bottle of wine, and I catch the label—that Malbec I mentioned liking weeks ago. Of course he remembered. Of course he went out and bought it.
My chest tightens with something dangerously close to tenderness. "You didn't have to—"
"I wanted to." He sets the bottle between us, his fingers brushing mine as I reach for it. The contact sends heat racing up my arm, and from the way his eyes darken, he feels it too. "Besides, I'm pretty sure our fake meeting requires proper refreshments."
I trace the wine label with my fingertip, hyperaware of him watching me. "Very thorough planning, Sullivan."
"I'm a thorough guy."
The words carry weight that has nothing to do with wine or fake meetings.
I glance up to find his gaze already on me—not scanning for networking opportunities like at every other event we've attended together, but focused entirely on my face.
Like I'm the only thing in his universe worth looking at.
My eyes drift to the bookshelf behind him, landing on a familiar spine. "I see you're still battling Ayn Rand," I say, nodding toward the bookmark jutting from Atlas Shrugged.
"She's winning," he admits, following my gaze. "But I refuse to let her have the last word."
We eat at his dining table, simple pasta with fresh herbs from the garden box on his balcony.
The food is perfect, but it's the conversation that feeds something deeper in me.
We don't talk about hockey or marketing or the impossible tightrope we're walking at work.
Instead, he asks about my childhood, about what I wanted to be before I discovered I had a gift for turning passion into profit margins.
"A teacher," I admit, twirling pasta around my fork. "Elementary school. I wanted to be the adult who made kids feel safe and seen."
"What changed?"
I think about it, really think about it, instead of giving him the polished answer I've perfected for networking events.
"My dad left when I was nine. Mom fell apart for two years. Someone had to keep the lights on, make sure Easton ate breakfast, forge Mom's signature on permission slips." I shrug, but it doesn't feel casual. "I got good at managing crises. Turned out there was a career in it."
Garrett's hand finds mine across the table, his thumb tracing slow circles on my knuckles. The touch is gentle, grounding.
"I'm sorry," he says, and I can tell he means it. "That's too much responsibility for a kid."
"Maybe. But it taught me that I could survive anything. That I was strong enough to rebuild when everything fell apart." I meet his eyes. "What about you? What did you want to be before hockey chose you?"
He laughs, and the sound fills his loft with warmth. "A chef. Seriously. I was obsessed with cooking shows, used to drive my mom crazy experimenting in the kitchen. Hockey was just something I was good at, but cooking... that felt like magic."
"You still cook."
"Still love it. There's something about creating something nourishing from nothing. About the precision and patience it requires." He pauses, considering. "Maybe it's not so different from hockey. Both require timing, practice, understanding how all the pieces work together."
We talk about his grandmother—fierce, tiny woman who taught him to read and bake bread and never let him get away with anything. About the farm where he grew up, the weight of being the oldest son, the pressure of carrying a family's hopes on his shoulders from the time he was sixteen.
I tell him about Easton, about watching my brother grow into this massive, protective force who still worries about me like I'm made of glass. About the loneliness of being the smartest person in most rooms, the exhaustion of always having to prove I belong.
The wine disappears. The candles burn lower. The jazz shifts from melancholy to sultry, and somewhere between his story about accidentally dying the team's laundry pink and my confession about organizing a protest for better vegetarian options in my college cafeteria, we migrate to the couch.
It happens naturally, like gravity. One moment we're sitting on opposite ends, talking and laughing, and the next I'm curled against his side, his arm around my shoulders, feeling safer than I have in months.
"This is nice," I murmur against his chest, breathing in the clean scent of his soap and something indefinably him.
"Yeah." His voice is rough with something deeper than contentment. "It is."
He tips my chin up with gentle fingers, and I see the exact moment the evening shifts. His eyes are dark, intense, focused entirely on my face like I'm the only thing in his universe.
When he leans down to kiss me, it's filled with comfort and peace. This is slow, deliberate, reverent. His lips are soft and sure, and when I part mine with a soft sigh, he deepens the kiss with a thoroughness that makes my toes curl.
This isn't stolen. This isn't desperate. This is chosen.
His hand slides into my hair, angling my head as he explores my mouth with a patience that sets every nerve ending on fire. I can taste the wine on his tongue, feel the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against my palm where it rests on his chest.
For the first time since this started, there's no clock ticking in my head. No fear of footsteps in the hallway or doors swinging open. Just this—his hands in my hair, his mouth on mine, the perfect weight of him surrounding me like a sanctuary.
I'm drowning in the sensation, in the rightness of being here with him, when his phone buzzes loudly on the coffee table.
The sound cuts through our bubble like a knife. We break apart instantly, the spell shattered, reality crashing back with brutal efficiency.
The screen lights up, and I see the name before Garrett can grab it.
Easton
Just finished film review. You still at the rink?
A wave of dizziness washes over me. The professional panic floods back—ice-cold and immediate. Easton at the rink, looking for his teammate. His teammate who's supposed to be laying low and focusing on the game, not entertaining his sister in his apartment like some kind of romantic retreat.
"Sorry," Garrett breathes, reading the message.
I'm already pulling away, smoothing my hair, my sweater, anything to erase the evidence of what we were just doing. "What are you going to tell him?"
Garrett's thumb moves across his phone screen with practiced ease.
Nah, headed home early. Long day.
The lie comes so naturally, so effortlessly, that it sends a chill down my spine. He hits send and sets the phone aside like it's nothing, but the moment is ruined. The warm, safe intimacy we'd built lies in pieces around us.
"This is..." I start, then stop, not sure how to finish the sentence.
"Harder than we thought it would be," he says quietly, reading my mind.
"The lying. The constant fear. The way we have to pretend we're nothing to each other." I lean back against the couch cushions, suddenly exhausted. "I knew it would be difficult, but I didn't realize how much energy it would take. How much of ourselves we'd have to hide."
Garrett shifts to face me, his expression serious. "Are you having second thoughts?"
The question hangs between us, loaded with everything we haven't said.
Am I? Part of me is terrified by how deep this is getting, how much it's starting to matter.
But when I look at him—really look at him, sitting in his grandmother's light surrounded by books and jazz and the scent of rising bread—I know the answer.
"No," I say, and I mean it. "But I need you to understand what we're risking. Not just my job, but my entire career. The reputation I've spent years building. If this gets out..."
"It won't." His voice is fierce, certain. "I won't let that happen."
"You can't promise that. Neither of us can." I reach for his hands, lacing our fingers together. "All we can promise is that we'll be careful. That we'll protect each other as much as we can."
"I can promise something else." He pulls me closer, until I'm back in his arms, until the warmth of him surrounds me again. "I can promise it's worth it. You're worth it."
The words settle into my chest like an anchor. Worth the risk. Worth the fear. Worth the exhaustion of living two lives.
When he kisses my forehead—soft, protective, reverent—I let myself believe him.
Outside, Minneapolis glitters in the darkness, indifferent to our secrets. Inside this fortress of brick and books and gentle jazz, we hold each other against the cold reality of what we're attempting.
It's not enough to keep the world at bay forever.
But for tonight, it's enough to keep us safe.